Dina Bengelsdorf - Week 1 -- Richard Blanco, "One Today”: We the People

Dina Bengelsdorf - Week 1 - “Pick a Poet” - Richard Blanco - “One Today”


“One Today” by Richard Blanco: We the People





As I read Richard Blanco’s name on the poet list for this week’s blog, I knew I had remembered the name from somewhere. I searched up his works online and at once, the memories of the first months of my sophomore year came flooding back. I was assigned The Prince of Los Cocuyos for my summer reading, and I remember the book’s powerful effects on myself and my tenth grade English class. Blanco’s memoir shed light on the challenges of having to pretend to be someone else around friends, family, and most importantly, oneself. To me, his story conveyed the importance of embracing myself and my heritage, under any and all circumstances. “One Today”, a poem written by Blanco and read by himself at Barack Obama’s second presidential inauguration, expresses important national messages in a broader perspective.

The inauguration poem begins with a peaceful image - one of sun, unity, and togetherness throughout the United States. While everyone leads very different lives, there is a “story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.” We are all under “One sun… one light…” and therefore our different stories don’t break us apart, rather bring us together. In the bigger picture, we are all equals.

Similarly to The Prince of Los Cocuyos, I noticed Blanco’s appreciation for the working class. He notes that everyone contributes to society - people who “clean tables, clean ledgers, or save lives - to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did for twenty years…” I appreciated that he did not focus on the upper or lower classes, but the middle as well. I believe that this comes from his own personal experiences, as a young boy working for his family’s store. Reading this poem reminded me of many different aspects of Blanco’s book, which I enjoyed. 

Finally, one of the things I appreciate most about “One Today” is the balance between the good, the bad, and everything in between. The poem addresses the unity and hard work of the country, but also the sadness, grief, and sorrow. He refers to gun violence and the deaths of young children. Especially in light of the fact that there have been hundreds of instances of gun violence after the year 2013, Blanco’s poem remains relevant today. There is still “the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain the empty desk of twenty children marked absent today, and forever.” America has not just healing to do, but revision.

What messages should an inauguration poem convey? As I believe an inauguration poem should express, the United States is a country of hope and opportunity along with sorrow and imperfections that must be recognized. Blanco does an amazing job through his poem’s conversational tone and vivid imagery that evokes emotion. His representation of the United States brings the country one step closer towards unity. 


https://poets.org/poem/one-today

Comments

  1. Jack YesnerSeptember 7, 2022 at 8:50 AM

    This is a perfect poem to be recited at a presidential inauguration because it invokes one of the greatest ideals of American society. Though we greatly differ throughout this massive land, we achieve the most as one unified people. I appreciate that Blanco highlighted hope, especially for an inauguration speech. It emphasizes that America is not defined by its tragedies, rather it can become a better place in the future if we work together.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jack Yesner Week 10 - The Imposter Syndrome

Image
  The end of the first semester of senior year is quickly approaching. This semester has been the root cause of my stress for the past few months, and I am glad it is nearly over. I tell myself that next semester will be less stressful because college applications are complete and schoolwork will be more relaxed, and I hope I am buying into it. But in reality, I know that I have told myself the future won’t be strenuous multiple times, and I end up regretting my past reassurances.  Throughout my life, I have strived for perfection. I could never start an assignment without a clear plan of what the finished product will look like, I had to rehearse anything spoken, and I never settled for less than 100% effort. But as I am approaching my final semester of school, I am starting to recognize that this is abnormal behavior.  I unfortunately believe that I have developed some form of the Imposter Syndrome. The Imposter Syndrome, which is also known as perceived fraudulen...
Read more

Leah Nagle - Week 4 - College is Stressing Me Out

Image
I feel like the second we started this school year, everyone (including myself) started freaking out about college. It’s funny to me that everyone talks about how stressful junior year is and how senior year is super chill, because that has definitely not been my experience. For me, in junior year, college was only a distant thought and my workload was manageable, but now, in senior year, I am so incredibly stressed with school, the SAT, and college applications.  Although I know that I am up to date with my college application work, it always feels like I’m behind because I’ll hear from a friend that they’re ahead of me. It makes me so stressed and I hate it, so I try to not compare myself to others, but it’s hard, ya know? There really is so much that goes into college applications that I didn’t even realize until now and that stresses me out.  On top of the actual work that has to be done in order to apply to college, another thing that’s stressful about the process is deci...
Read more

Rosalie Weiss- Week 1- “The Hermit Crab” by Mary Oliver

Image
The Hermit Crab is a poem by Mary Oliver in which she reflects on an encounter she had with a hermit crab and the observations she made while watching it find a new home.  I believe that the ocean, which Oliver describes as always “shouting and hissing toward the future,” every wave “leaving the shore littered” with “ornaments of death,” is a symbol for time. (lines 19-25) The hermit crab fights against the ocean by making a home out of the old shells it had discarded. This “rebellion” is also a way of fighting against time, “connecting everything, the past to the future.” (lines 29-33) I interpret this part of the poem to be a metaphor for remembering and learning from our past, as by holding on to our memories, we are effectively rebelling against time and its efforts to wash the past away.   In the first stanza of poem, Oliver writes, “Once I looked inside the darkness of a shell folded like a pastry and there was a fancy face.” (lines 1-4) Upon reading this, I thought...
Read more